Book excerpt: The Sutra of Explaining the Profound Secret provides the theoretical foundations of Yogacara Buddhism with Sakyamuni Buddha's teachings on mind consciousness, the ultimate meanings of knowledge, the selflessness of the names and concepts, the natures of existent beings, the yoga path of samatha and vipasyana, the ten stages of bodhisattva and the ten paramitas, and the exquisite and superior things the Thus-Comers have fulfilled. This sutra serves as the cornerstone for building the Buddhist epistemology, philosophy of the mind, and the pedagogy for bodhisattva education, and contributes to the establishment of the status of Yogacara school in the great-vehicle Buddhism.